Organizational Conflict And Change In Healthcare Organizations

Conflict

Discuss about the Community Health for Drug.

Organizational conflict is the identified state of discord that is caused by the perceived or actual opposition to the interests, values and needs between the colleagues who are working together. Many forms of conflicts exist in organizations and this is due to the inevitable clash between the affected groups and individuals and the formal authority (Clegg, Mikkelsen & Sewell, 2015). Some of the common organizational conflicts occur regarding the work procedure, division of revenues and the division of work. Jurisdictional disagreements can occur between the management and the individuals and the unions and the departments. Conflicts can also arise from the personality, jealousies, rivalries and struggles for power. In the health arena, conflict is a growing concern and should be recognized for the physicians during their training. Workplace violence is increasing and most of them remain unresolved or unsatisfactory that affects the staff morale (Graham & Folkes, 2014). However, disagreement acts as a precursor to conflict and expression of different opinions does not lead to a resolution. The underlying factors can result in the precipitation of the transition from the disagreement to the conflict. This essay will discuss the conflict in The Nomads Clinic and will discuss the benefits and challenges of the organizational conflict occurring in the clinic with their effective management.

Organizational conflicts in the clinics and healthcare organizations might exist between the various physicians, between the healthcare team or the staff and the patient’s family or the patient and between the staff and the physicians. The range of the controversies can fall between major controversies to minor disagreements that can lead to violence or litigation (Rinderle, 2013). These conflicts can exert an adverse effect on the patient care, morale and productivity and can result in impeded efficiency, limited staff contributions and higher employee turnover. Healthcare organizations are the complex systems requiring effective cooperation and teamwork for effective functioning. Conflict mismanagement results in a negative impact on patient outcomes and disruption of care. Competing priorities in the healthcare organizational structures often lead to the professional and personal conflicts between the providers of healthcare. Personalities and strong philosophies collide under various pressurized situations like critical decisions, task deadlines and different understanding levels that affect the future decisions. The approach for understanding the conflicts among the various caregivers requires the understanding the environment in which the provision of care was done (Kelly et al., 2014). Good communication is essential before and after the care delivery and therefore, it is essential for the clinics and healthcare organizations to anticipate that conflict and communication skills are the primary predictors to determine the ability of an organization to progress.

Benefits and Challenges of Organizational Conflicts in Healthcare

Although conflict is generally regarded as a negative occurrence, in some ways it can be actually beneficial. Therefore, instead of resolving the conflict, the clinics and healthcare organizations might look for ways to improve their business through the conflicts. Conflict serves to increase the employee engagement and therefore, during the presentation of a new idea, the employees participate actively without the fear of conflict. Without this, bad ideas could have been implemented and that could have affected the organization (Pettigrew, 2014). Conflicts can help in getting the attention of the employees. In case of debates and discussions, conflicts make the employees participate actively without getting immune and express their ideas and this increases the overall quality of the discussions (Vaara et al., 2012). Conflicts help to improve the relationships between the employees as when two employees engage in a conflict in a professional manner, they move on to work together for a longer duration. Therefore, the organizations that promote ethical conflict tend to develop stronger relationships with their colleagues. Conflict are also known to improve the morale of the employee as if they are allowed to get engaged in conflicts by sharing their ideas freely, it makes them feel that they are valued. The ideas get improved as a result of conflict as the employees who are not scared of conflicts and can speak freely can contribute to larger proportions towards the development of the organization.

Apart from the benefits of the organizational conflicts, there are several challenges of organizational conflicts in healthcare that requires attention. Conflicts divert the prime objective of the organization as a group of employees struggles with a conflict. Conflicts create groups due to the lack of resources, position and freedom. Due to the attainment of the result of the conflict, decisions get delayed in the organization. The parties start focusing on the differences of interests and opinions that results in the development of perceived conflict and causes deadlocks for conflict resolution and making decisions. The unaggressive members who do not aggressively participate in a conflict or negotiation are made sidelines and this cause to lower their morale for being made the non-participatory members (Harper, 2015). Due to conflicts, the employees avoid listening and try to put forward their individual problems which further aggravate the situation. As the conflict develops through various stages, it becomes a win or lose situation for the employees that makes the exploration of the available alternatives more difficult.

Managing Organizational Conflicts in Healthcare

Conflicts are inevitable in healthcare organizations and clinics and the organizations can choose to recognize the conflict as either inherently positive or negative. However, management of conflict is essential and it is a dynamic process that involves the recognition of its various stages with the application of the appropriate intervention (Slaikeu & Hasson, 2012). A conflict management procedure must be developed and implemented by The Nomads Clinic so that the quality of care and patient safety does not get affected. It should include recognition of the conflict as the indicator of early detection of the approaching problems. Proactive responses should be promoted for the conflicts and problems. A culture of problem solving, open communication and mutual respect should be encouraged during the intervention or inquiry that is relating to the conflict and appropriate means should be developed for working towards the resolution of the conflict. The stakeholders of the clinic can be included for development of a conflict management procedure by taking their inputs and educating them in the management of conflict in healthcare and making them accountable for the application of the procedure.

Organizational change is the process by which a healthcare organization changes its organizational structure, technologies, operational methods, strategies and structure for affecting the change in the organization. These changes can occur for distinct time period or can be continuous. The clinicians are on the verge of change and this is often recognized as a great challenge and workplace issue for moving the organization forward. Shifts in the environmental factors can cause the healthcare organizations for changing their strategies (Benn, Dunphy & Griffiths, 2014). Strategic changes have often been found to fail as the individuals do not adopt the necessary behaviors for successful implementation of the new strategies. Successful implementation of the strategic changes requires the individuals to change their behaviors and the leaders can increase the change results by developing general norms like mistake tolerance and teamwork. This causes to increase the readiness for change among the employees (Cameron & Green, 2015). This essay will discuss three points that are required for the implementation of a significant change in The Nomads Clinic.

Leadership can play a pivotal role in a healthcare organization to bring about change. Various leadership theories can be followed to implement the changes and the operational strategies that can improve the financial outcomes and the quality of care. Administrative leadership can be an effective strategy for implementing change in a healthcare organization. It is the individual actions of the managers for coordination and planning of the organizational activities like the bureaucratic functions for mobilizing the employees. Administrative leaders establish the change to sustain and protect the essential operational functions for meeting the needs of the organization (Jones-Roberts, 2008). There are two fundamental aspects of administrative leadership that includes strategic leadership and operational leadership. Strategic leadership makes the leaders to guide the healthcare organization with a futuristic outlook and they ensure that the outcomes and goals are attained by the employees by inspiring them with a shared vision and clarifying the purpose. Operational leadership is carried out by the leaders by the activities of supporting and hiring staff members, maintaining a positive climate in the workplace and overseeing the budgets (Van Wart, 2013). The manager of The Nomads Clinic may follow administrative leadership prior to the implementation process as it is beneficial in orchestrating tasks. Prior to the implementation of the change, the manager can share his plans with his employees and can develop a futuristic vision within them. This will make the employees certain about the goals and outcomes of the change and will help to maintain a positive environment in the clinic without any confusion and paranoia.

Change

Adaptive leadership can be another effective strategy for implementing change in a healthcare organization as it is a practical framework of leadership that helps the leaders to thrive and adapt in the challenging environments. Collectively and individually, it helps in bringing about a meaningful and gradual process of change. It is an interactive, emergent and dynamic process of leadership that aids in producing adaptive outcomes in the social system by a collaborative change movement. Adaptive leadership is a form of diagnosis of the essentials from the expendables for bringing a challenge to the existing condition. Adaptive leadership is applied by the leaders when the progress and innovations are not attained with the present approaches as a means of change implementation (Styhre, 2002). It innovates, interrupts and diagnoses the approaches for creating the capabilities that are most suitable for the organizational aspirations. It is the real time purposeful evolution. Adaptive leadership studies the multiple perspectives that can be attributed to the change and identifies the gap between the current approaches and the desired state. It works by changing the attitudes and behaviors of the employees along with the provision of new learning (Obolensky, 2014). The leaders adopt the adaptive leadership for employing the relevant tools and processes for building the adaptive capacities of the healthcare organizations. The manager of The Nomads Clinic should adopt the adaptive leadership during the implementation process as it provides with the relevant tools and processes that are required for bringing about the change in the organization by replacing the previous approaches.

Enabling leadership can be another effective strategy for implementing change in a healthcare organization by making the entire team a leader. It is the process of discovering ways for actively engaging the employees to work on the issues that will affect them and the organization. The leaders maneuver and foster the conditions that allow emergence and catalyzes adaptive leadership (Uhl-Bien, Marion & McKelvey, 2007). With this leadership style, the employees get motivated and committed for bringing about the change in the organization by attaining their goals. The leaders test their motivation and improve their awareness of the impact of their behavior and personality on others. The enable leaders have the humility and confidence that they are always in the process of learning. During the process of the implementation of change, the leader steps back and the team member who has the better knowledge of the implementation process takes over the leadership charges. The leader so appointed gains autocratic controls in case of a crisis or emergency and has the authority to empower someone else as the leader who has better knowledge during the period of crisis. This is possible only because the leaders possess the respect and trust of his employees and team members and provides value to every member of the team (Hoegl & Muethel, 2016). The leaders take on decisions concerning everyone in the team. The manager of The Nomads Clinic might apply enabling leadership throughout the implementation process as it will involve everyone in the process and the resistance to change will be either less or nil. Considering the input from every employee will be a bit time consuming but it will help to avoid the mishap of choosing the wrong plan.

Since The Nomads Clinic is an organization for the homeless patients, therefore changes have to be made considering the various situations under which the volunteer health professionals with these people. Since it is not similar to treating the regular patients, therefore it can be proposed that enabling leadership will be the best possible way to implement the change considering the inputs of the volunteers and making them a part of the implementation process.

References

Benn, S., Dunphy, D., & Griffiths, A. (2014). Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge.

Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2015). Making sense of change management: a complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.

Clegg, S., Mikkelsen, E. N., & Sewell, G. (2015). Conflict: Organizational. InInternational encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences. Elsevier Science.

Graham, S., & Folkes, V. S. (2014). Attribution theory: Applications to achievement, mental health, and interpersonal conflict. Psychology Press.

Harper, C. (2015). Organizations: Structures, processes and outcomes. Routledge.

Hoegl, M., & Muethel, M. (2016). Enabling Shared Leadership in Virtual Project Teams: A Practitioners’ Guide. Project Management Journal.

Jones-Roberts, A. (2008). Change Management in a Home Care Nursing Service: A Partnership to Improve Organization Performance. Home health care management & practice.

Kelly, E. L., Moen, P., Oakes, J. M., Fan, W., Okechukwu, C., Davis, K. D., … & Mierzwa, F. (2014). Changing work and work-family conflict evidence from the work, family, and health network. American Sociological Review, 0003122414531435.

Obolensky, M. N. (2014). Complex adaptive leadership: Embracing paradox and uncertainty. Gower Publishing, Ltd.

Pettigrew, A. M. (2014). The politics of organizational decision-making. Routledge.

Rinderle, S. (2013). The SAGE handbook of conflict communication. J. G. Oetzel, & S. Ting-Toomey (Eds.). Sage.

Slaikeu, K. A., & Hasson, R. H. (2012). Controlling the costs of conflict: How to design a system for your organization. John Wiley & Sons.

Styhre, A. (2002). Non-linear change in organizations: organization change management informed by complexity theory. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 23(6), 343-351.

Uhl-Bien, M., Marion, R., & McKelvey, B. (2007). Complexity leadership theory: Shifting leadership from the industrial age to the knowledge era. The leadership quarterly, 18(4), 298-318.

Vaara, E., Sarala, R., Stahl, G. K., & Björkman, I. (2012). The impact of organizational and national cultural differences on social conflict and knowledge transfer in international acquisitions. Journal of Management Studies, 49(1), 1-27.

Van Wart, M. (2013). Administrative leadership theory: A reassessment after 10 years. Public Administration, 91(3), 521-543.